Asher stretched and looked around, rubbing his eyes and frowning. “I have a feeling I missed something,” he said, eyes haunted. “What the hell happened? Are we in danger? I have the feeling that we’re in danger.”
“Stop being such a pussy,” Connal grumbled, scooping up a bit of spilled ham from his plate and popping it in his mouth. “Everything’s fucking fine.” He chuckled, “I’d even say excellent.”
Dizzy laughed as well. “Sure, in a way.”
Odilienne was idly playing on her recorder, fingers dancing up and down the instrument. Grygmiir lifted his tankard up, took a drink, and lowered it again. “We have ourselves sort of on the outskirts of things, and the right thing is to see it to its end.”
“Yeah, yeah,” the elven Tyrian smoothed his hand through his hair and sighed. “Just feel that something horrible is coming.”
Thon took a deep breath and let it out slowly. “Let’s just sum up the last two days,” he muttered, breath coming breezily between his tusks. “Sort of lay it all out there.”
The bald dwarf nodded. “Regale us, Brother,” he said with a smile.
“And make it fucking interesting, do you mind? I haven’t punched something in the face in a day or two,” Connal groused, making a fist and kissing the back of it, “And it’s making me grouchy.”
“Grouchy? You? Does a goblin smell?” Gryg chuckled.
“Rather mouthy for the new guy,” the monastic replied.
“I’ve been here for 2 years, you know.”
“Could’ve fooled me.”
Thon held his hand up. “Asher,” he began.
“Captain Asher,” Dizzy corrected softy.
“Sorry. Captain Asher. If you remember, we left the McGovern Warehouse and moved Dogsbody to our house.”
“Got it,” he replied slowly, looking around. “Shhh.”
“Sorry.” Thon tried to pitch his voice lower and continued, “Anyway, he bathed in the basement after explaining the concept of soap to Odi.” The Halfling smiled, giving a thumbs up and sniffing her armpit. The half-orc continued, “At that point, Dizzy sent a message coded to Phaiyr Carom that we have Dogsbody and asked if we should bring him to the Adventurer's Guild.”
“Is that when we went on the great parsley quest?” Dizzy asked.
“Not yet, we slept and in the morning we IMMEDIATELY SPLIT THE PARTY.”
“Always a good plan,” Gryg agreed.
“Not a Plan B set it on fire sort of plan,” Connal shrugged, “But as far as plans go, it was pretty fucking good.” He pointed to the Half-orc and the bald dwarf, “Thon and Dizzy went to meet Phayir Carom after not getting a response. And Dogsbody stayed at the home and started cleaning.”
“Had to make him earn his keep,” Dizzy noted.
“He didn’t have to,” Asher suggested.
“Yeah, but this way it got done and we didn’t have to do it.” He tapped the table with his forefinger. “I swear, the murderous ranger and his crapping wolf left a stink in the woodwork of the floorboards that I can still scent now and again.”
“Didn’t Sybil offer to clean it up?” Thon asked.
“Didn’t Sybil disappear as soon as it was feasible that she’d have to clean up partially tamed liquefied wolf droppings off the floor?”
The party laughed and then Thon continued. “Gryg, Asher, Odi, and Connell went to the docks to set up a meeting with Moon. And Connell bought 20 lbs of Rainbow Trout.”
“Needed a cover, you know?” The Monastic gave a lopsided grin. “And fish sounded good. Plus I’m pretty sure I had an odd amount of coin and this was an opportunity to straighten out my fucking money pouch.”
“We reconnected at the house,” Thon resumed his narrative, “and gave Dogsbody the fish to prepare for some sort of stew or soup.”
“Parsley,” Dizzy muttered.
“Yah, getting to it. And he requested some ingredients as we went to the main Sif Temple in the second ring. We spoke to the Abbess…”
“Cala,” both Connal and Dizzy supplied, “Abbess Cala.”
“Yah. That one. Abbess Cala who asked us to talk to and maybe halt Hraltrek's operation.”
“That’s the guy in the note who had the hit against my brother and his group,” Odie supplied.
“Yah. And funny thing, the Abbess was using terms similar to the Thieves Guild in that we were acting as her hands in this manner.”
Connal nodded, eyes staring far away. “So we went to the fucking Sifian Outreach Temple and met with Hreatrek.”
Asher gave a slight cough. “Not a very imposing fellow.”
“Nope, opportunistic prick in my mind.”
Thon pointed to Dizzy, “He Zone of Truth'd him and had him spill all the beans. Moon and Granmund ARE the same person. He is collecting magic artifacts in an act against Grimyria.”
Asher sighed. “We’ve had to deal with him before. Outside and upriver a bit, old fort. Giant Ice frogs.”
Gryg looked up, “Really? Sorry I missed that.”
“Not sure you ever came to anything before,” Dizzy noted. “You need to put yourself out there. Be more like Shimlagesh. That gnome shows up everywhere.”
Thon was rubbing his chin in thought. “Hraetrek is running his own startup Thieves Guild, working with funding from Grimyria against Moon. We had a chance for some private talk and Dizzy made a deal with this guy. He will move Dogsbody, without any of us telling him or letting him know who he is, out of the City, put a cancellation on the contract, and tell Virdrid the gnome that the kill order is off. In exchange we give him the locker key.”
“Can we trust all this to happen?” Asher asked.
“Guilds are based on deals and reputations. He’ll honor it. Wrinkle is that Virdrid has a safehouse in the city no one knows about. The hiccup is that Virdrid may still want to fulfill the contract - as a Sifian, an unfinished job is completely unacceptable.”
“I mean, my god, everyone knows that!” Connal thumped the table and coughed. “You take a job, you finish it and do it with the striving goal to do it with excellence.”
“So even if we pay him the 250 crowns for the Bounty, he may not drop it. In which case, we may have to go to his safehouse and kick his ass.”
Dizzy shook his head. “It was nobles, Thon, not crowns. If it was 250 crowns I would stab Olo to death myself.”
“Hey!” Odie exclaimed.
“Just saying.”
“No, I get it. But seriously, not in front of me, ok?”
“I thought,” Asher asked a few moments later, “That his safehouse was not known?”
“It’s presumably the "X" on our map,” the half-orc shrugged. “Gryg feels like he could find it if need be.” He took a drink of his ale and then added , “The Abbess of the Temple of Sif is definitely running a Thieves Guild of sort of Sif.”
“Oh. Um, weird?”
Dizzy smiled and gave a small wave. “I’m hoping to sign up under her. And Thon has his sights on learning under Hibuela Asalin, the Guild's Lawyer.”
“Assassin,” Connal offered.
“That’s what I said, isn’t it?”
“So what are we doing?” the half-elf asked.
Gryg replied ,”We've decided to align with Hraetrek as it works towards our needs.” He pointed to the Halfling, “Saving Olo. And is the lesser of two evils.”
Thon nodded once. “Yah. Moon's goal is to end ALL divine connection - fuck that.” The party grunted in assent. “There is yet another party involved here. Someone tipped off the guards about the Silver Box that got the crèche pinched. Moon doesn’t make sense, as he needs those items. Hraetrek didn’t know how Moon was getting them. My guess is that it may be Hatring - the guy running the McGovern warehouse. If a unit isn’t cleaned out by the end of the rental period, he gets the items inside and has the right to pawn it all.” He shrugged, hands held wide, “It's a stretch but possible. May be worth looking into.”
Dizzy shook his head, “No, I feel like Hatring’s whole thing falls apart if he gets caught doing that. His reputation is everything. I would lean more towards that lady Hraetrek name dropped.”
“Who?”
”I don't remember the name,” Dizzy shrugged, “He said if he canceled the contract a necromancer lady would kill him. Cancelled without the goods at least.”
Thon shuddered, “That's the lady from Grimyria. Working against Moon.”
Dizzy nodded, “She put the contract out on Olo and his friends. She found out who was doing the stealing and stopped them as a short term solution to the Moon problem. Then she needs to get the key and stuff to finish the job. Thus the contract. Hraetrek is just the facilitator she hired to get that done, since she doesn't have the resources to do it herself."
“Grymeria,” Asher frowned. “That is not…good.”
“No it fucking isn’t, that’s for sure.” Connal observed.
“Look, I do not love the idea of being kind of on the same side as Grymeria, but in this case. It’s the lesser of the two evils.”
“So…Virdrid is the next issue we have?” Asher asked.
“Yep.”
“Can you find that place on the map, Gryg?”
“Pretty sure I could,” the dwarf replied. “Be happy to take down some more shitty kobolds, assuming he has them with him again.”
“Shitty, yeah. They were,” Connal looked down at his laundered shirt and frowned. “I hope I don’t get any more of that shit on me.”
“Finish up,” Dizzy said, motioning for everyone to drink the last of their ale. “Daylight’s wasting and I’d like to taste some fish stew very soon and then figure out the next step in this mess.”
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